Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Public Star Party, Saturday June 28, 7:45-10:00

This weekend the Temecula Valley Astronomers will set up telescopes at Marna O'Brien Park. My best guess at how the evening will play is as follows:

At 7:45, Venus is visible in the west, and maybe Saturn. Saturn will be low and barely detectable to the naked eye. I do not know how well it will be viewed in scopes, but a view is possible before it sets around 8:30 (allowing for the high western horizon).
8:00 pm is the official start. I'll be doing a shortened version of my presentation on Exoplanets. Bring your own chair. During the presentation, people are welcome to wander about looking through the telescopes.
By 8:30, the presentation will end and it will be dark enough to see some star clusters, globular clusters, nebulae, and double stars.
At 9:00 there will be a drawing for Galileoscopes donated by The City of Wildomar. I described these in more detail in a previous post.
At 9:10, the gibbeous moon rises. The moon will wash out the fainter objects but be a fine target itself. Also by this time, Jupiter should clear the trees to the east and be visible in telescopes.
Experience tells me that after telescopes are given away, the crowd thins out, so I'm guessing an end time near 10:00pm.
Below is a map.

jg




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